Even more surprising, the Administration hires a "Director of Dramatic Productions," who directs all the group's major productions, whether musicals, comedies, or dramas. In effect the director exercises a veto over productions, and last spring her refusal to direct Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman led to a rebel production sponsored by The Daily Pennsylvanian.

For the past few years the Players have done $5,000 productions of Broadway musicals in the spring, not primarily for their intrinsic value, but simply because they are proved money-makers. Whereas Shakespeare faces a small audience in the University's mammoth Irvine Auditorium, Kiss Me Kate plays to a full house.

Only Financial Control

While publications are not subject to the same kind of control as dramatics, there is nevertheless a Graduate Manager of Publications, who exercises financial, if not censorial, control of Penn's four journals.

For a daily paper, the Penn undergraduate may read something known as the "D.P.," a sheet that regards itself as competition to the Philadelphia papers, according to the views of some editors. They believe this despite the fact that the Daily Pennsylvanian's Monday edition goes to press Friday or Saturday night. The paper does not adopt editorial policies on issues like the Presidential elections when the six executives disagree. Most editors, consequently, feel it is enough to cover College news.

A New Attempt at Humor

Other publications include a humor magazine, Highball--recently started after its predecessor was suppressed for lewdness--and a yearbook.

But perhaps the most interesting publication is The Pennsylvania Literary Review, an off-beat journal of frequent literary maturity. Editorially, the Review is refreshingly critical of the University ("We deplore the recent growth of bureaucracy and petty officialism..."), although it says little that has not been said better by David Riesman and The Saturday Review.

Of all the 50-odd activities on campus, however, none can compete for the average student's attention as effectively as the omnipotent fraternity system.

Fraternities at Pennsylvania are a curious admixture of good times, prejudice, big men on the campus, social stratification, and token interest in the academic. Fraternities not only form the bases for social life and undergraduate activities, but also are an indispensable part of the University's housing system. If fraternities did not exist, Pennsylvania could not house 900 more of its students. (Of course, the fraternities cannot house the remaining 1,1300 of its members who live in dorms, approved apartment houses, or commute.)

The frats, moreover, have deep roots in Penn's history, and to suggest that they are perhaps a bit archaic is to incur undying hatred from many prominent (and wealthy) alumni. The "old grad" would as soon sacrifice a thousand professors as do away with old Kappa Dappa Doo. Whether or not it likes the system, the University is shackeled to it for the foreseeable future.

Actually, most Penn administrators will say, with some reservations, that fraternities are a "good thing." They argue that they not only provide housing which the University cannot provide, but that they serve a useful function by breaking a inchoate student body into manageable groups.

Fraternities Produce Leaders

The fraternity thus gives the student who belongs an in-group with which to identify and a base from which he will hopefully move out into broader, college-wide associations. And it is true that from a core of fraternities emerges virtually all undergraduate leaders. As one non-member said, "Most people who are doing things here are fraternity men--you get to know more people if you belong."

Whatever their useful functions, most administrators and faculty members would probably agree with President Harnwell's statement that "if fraternities had never been established at Penn, I doubt we would go to the trouble to set them up." For fraternities present at least three major troubles to the University.